We’re putting fossil fuel industry influence under the microscope

Earlier this month, we announced the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) had awarded $2.5 million in grant funding for Mapping the Power of the Carbon-Extractive Corporate Resource Sector, a research partnership jointly led by Parkland Institute, the University of Victoria, and the BC and Saskatchewan offices of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). In the second of two blogs, project co-directors Shannon Daub and Bill Carroll explain what the project aims to accomplish.

The tremendous concentration of power and influence we see in the fossil fuel industry today places sharp limits on our democracy (for examples, see our previous post). And as oil, gas and coal corporations pursue their relatively narrow, short-term profit goals, crafting effective responses to the climate crisis becomes more difficult.

One of the key steps we can take towards a more level democratic playing field is to create greater transparency. Knowledge of precisely how the industry is structured, and how our economic and political systems favour entrenched private interests over the public interest, is crucial. Without this knowledge we cannot have a meaningful discussion about democratic alternatives.

The Corporate Mapping Project promises to shine a bright light on the fossil fuel industry by investigating the ways in which corporate power is organized and exercised. The initiative is a partnership of academic and community-based researchers and advisors who share a commitment to advancing reliable knowledge that supports citizen action and transparent public policy making.

We focus on “mapping” how power and influence play out in the oil, gas and coal industries of BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan. We will also map the wider connections that link Western Canada’s fossil fuel sector to other sectors of the economy (both national and global) and to other parts of society (governments and other public institutions, think tanks and lobby groups, etc).

A map is a guide that helps us find our way across terrain that can be disorienting and treacherous. Through mapping, we want to make corporate power and influence visible. Doing so can support communities, workers, First Nations and Aboriginal groups, civil society organizations and concerned citizens in their efforts to reshape our economy along more democratic and environmentally sustainable lines.

Our mapping efforts are focused in four key areas:

1. How are the people and companies that control fossil-fuel corporations organized as a network, and how does that network connect with other sectors of the Canadian and global economy? That is, how is economic power organized in and around the fossil-fuel sector?

2. How does that economic power reach into political and cultural life, though elite networks, funding relationships, lobbying and mass-media advertising and messaging? What are the implications of such corporate influence for politics and society?

3. How is corporate power wielded at ground level, from fossil-fuel extraction and transport right through to final consumption? If we follow a barrel of bitumen from its source to the end user, how does it affect the communities and environments all along the way? How and why do certain links along these commodity chains become flashpoints of intense political struggle, as we have seen particularly with pipeline projects?

4. How can we build capacity for citizen monitoring of corporate power and influence, while expanding the space for democratic discussion?

Over the next six years, our partnership will answer these questions and make our research widely available. We will develop an open-source, publicly-accessible database of who’s who in and around the fossil-fuel sector, kept current by community researchers. And we will engage Canadians in a conversation about the role of the fossil fuel sector in our democracy.

We know that the climate crisis requires us to make a transition away from fossil fuels. The key questions are what sort of transition we will make, and how quickly. The answers hinge significantly on whether citizens, Indigenous people, workers and environmentalists are able to counterbalance the power and influence of the fossil-fuel sector. We and our partners in the Corporate Mapping Project look forward to providing the kinds of knowledge that can help fuel a just and timely transition.

Shannon Daub is associate director with the BC Office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and is a co-director of the Corporate Mapping Project. Her research interests include social movements, framing, environmental communication, and democratic capacity.

Dr. William Carroll is a critical sociologist at the University of Victoria, with research interests in the areas of social movements and social change as well as the political economy of corporate capitalism. He was a founding participant in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Cultural, Social and Political Thought and currently serves as Director of the Interdisciplinary Minor/Diploma Program in Social Justice Studies. He has been awarded the Canadian Sociology Association's John Porter Memorial Prize twice: in 1988 for Corporate Power and Canadian Capitalism and in 2006 for Corporate Power in a Globalizing World. He is a co-director of the Corporate Mapping Project.

Parkland Institute is an Alberta-wide, non-partisan research centre situated within the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta. Parkland Institute studies economic, social, cultural, and political issues facing Albertans and Canadians, using the perspective of political economy. more »